This article approaches social and cultural history of economy (especially the phenomenon of inflation) by examining the interconnections between (a) the social logic underlying the production of economic theories (taking into account the social careers and profiles of economic experts), (b) the modulations of national public economic spheres (which serve as channels for propagating economic visions of the social world beyond the narrow circle of specialists), and (c) economic cultures (that is, the general forms of representation and agency found in economic life). The article focuses on a recent period in the economic cultural history of Brazil and Argentina, dominated by the application of monetary stabilization plans depicted as "heterodox" (the Cruzado and Austral plans). The comparative analysis looks to reveal the transformation of economists into public intellectuals, the mechanisms through which economic pedagogy is achieved, and the relations between economic and national cultures in the two countries.